Breaking: Toronto releases orchestra president

TORONTO, ONTARIO — 03/30/16 — The Board of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Jeff Melanson, President & CEO of the TSO, have mutually decided that it is in the best interests of both parties that he resign from his employment with the TSO. The TSO has accepted Mr. Melanson’s resignation effective March 29, 2016.

Richard Phillips, Chair of the Board of Directors of the TSO, thanked Mr. Melanson for the many positive contributions he has made to the TSO. Mr. Melanson has been instrumental in developing a new strategic plan…

Can’t agree on this one, Eddie. Her social media remarks were reprehensible, and violated the norms of acceptable behaviour in Canada (although I believe that Calgary — redneck country — had no problem with her). As I wrote on this forum at the time, it was never her views to which I objected — though obviously many do, there usually being two sides in disputes of this sort, and neither usually being angelic — but her mode of expression. Because of her vulgarity and racist vitriol, I think her position was severely compromised, and she seems to have taken a truculent posture since that has not done much to endear her to civilised people around here.

People seem to forget that Ukraine, while doubtless injured to a fairly severe extent by some Russian activity, is far from clean-handed in these disputes. It is a message that is being lost in the noise of people like Lisitsa, and to find reasoned analysis of the background and foreground of the conflict you actually have to look for it.

As for the TSO: could go either way. A new CEO could possibly want to mark a clear line in the sand between the ancien regime of Melanson and the new tenure. Or he could come to the same conclusion as his predecessor and decide that this artist is more trouble than she is worth.

2. I don’t see how it was illegal. She was paid in full. And her termination was prompted by her behaviour, to which many TSO patrons took reasonable exception, including those who might agree with her basic position.

3. I am pretty sure she completed her gig in Calgary after the TSO debacle.

But I think you are right — it is unlikely she will be top of any lists pf potential guest artists. If that says Canadians dislike racist invective, I would imagine they will wear that badge proudly.

I am not going to take up the cudgels further. I posted in order to register my rejection and revulsion for Brian’s blatantly politically-motivated post.

We are clearly never going to agree on this issue – and since it is no longer an issue, I am withdrawing from any further discussion of it – with you, or anyone else either 😉 We’ve been through all the issues extensively already.

She is still on the schedule to play at Toronto’s Koerner Hall, a major venue, on April 10th. A long and extremely demanding program that plays to her formidable strengths, and includes much rare Scriabin as well as Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in D minor.

“Pro-Putin”?! I am a fellow Ukrainian, originally from Ivano-Frankivsk, and have been an admirer and follower of Valentina Lisitsa (as a musician) for more than 15 years. I have never heard her say anything even remotely “pro-Putin”. In fact, when I first met her, she was firmly on the Ukraininan nationalist bandwagon (thankfully, she’s evolved away from it). Her alleged sin was to call the Nov 2013 – Feb 2014 events in Ukraine what they most truly and sincerely were: a coup d’etat that was paid for by some of Ukraine’s richest oligarchs and employed around 20,000 Nazis from western Ukraine as its crack troops and main moving force. Calling the current Kyiv regime a “Nazi junta” was neither slander nor abusive language on Ms. Lisitsa’s part; it is the sad truth. It is also sad truth that Canada, above and beyond any other country, gave refuge in 1940s to tens of thousands of west-Ukraininan Nazis who had on their hands the blood of at least 500,000 of their Jewish, Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian neighbours. Shame on Jeff Melanson for having yielded back in 2015 to pressure from west-Ukrainian ultranationalist groups.

From the archives

From the archives

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